Rebel Without a Clue

[Draft Version 1 - January 12th, 2007] Here's something I'm playing around with, just as an exercise in self-reflection, as well as humor hopefully. I've always fashioned myself as a rebel, and I can probably get beau coup (I was gonna go with boo coo on this) folks, at least my parents, to chime in here on this one. Coupled with my obsession with absurdity and you can start to guess what kind of and how much therapy would probably be recommended. I'll start with a stab at the definition, then we'll go see what Danny Webster and Wikipedia have to say: bobJuan says: Rebellion is the act, or attitude of one in defiance or against the status quo. Danny says: Rebellion: a: open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government b : an instance of such defiance or resistance And Wikipedia: A rebellion is, in the most general sense, a refusal to accept authority. It may therefore be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors from civil disobedience to a violent organized attempt to destroy established authority. It is often used in reference to armed resistance against an established government, but can also refer to mass nonviolent resistance movements. Those who participate in rebellions are known as "rebels". I think we can use the "usually unsuccessful" part from our friend Danny as a point of departure for this discussion. Rebellion is something I enjoy, it makes me feel alive and different, and of course special. Too often though, us rebels don't rebel enough, deeply enough. And when you can find one who does, you can probably bet their onto something a bit more interesting and fascinating than those who don't bother. For example, I rebel "against" authority, say the church, or the establishment, the way things are. When I dig into this a bit I see that what I am rebelling against is an attitude of complacency, of the end of exploration. It seems to me that the evangelicals of my youth quit looking, asking, searching, and got stuck, already knowing everything. All the answers were known, all the rights and wrongs defined, named, nailed down, and so no real searching or praying was really necessary. So I didn't need to figure out my deal with God on my own, it was prescribed. And then I got old enough to sense what was real for me and what was not. (Well at least what was not). I didn't have my own real connection with God. Next up, rebellion. Now, as an amateur rebel, the approach is to throw the bathwater and the young baby out together (you've heard this expression before, the image is just wrong!). This is the usually unsuccessful approach that Danny mentioned above. Don't look here for anything real, it's all surface crap. Move on. And as an amateur in life, I moved too quickly and didn't recognize what I was truly against; certainly did not have the maturity to recognize that what I was sick of was the stuff that doesn't work for me, the automatic pilot ways in which people behave when they quit searching, once they have it all figured out. The laziness involved in blind acceptance to a norm, whatever that norm is. I'm a Democrat! (what a terrible thing to say, well not as terrible as another name I'm thinking of). I believe there is a God, there is spirit working that we are all a part of. Certainly it is all of us, or it is not true at all. And it seems that the Christians and the Muslims and the what-have-yous have lost track of the sweetness of their origins and have taken up being special! So, it's the being done that I don't like. On the political scene, it's evidenced by voting the ticket. That drives me crazy. When did the thirst for the heart of the ideals get replaced with dogma? Why do religions and organizations loose touch with the why, and practically all of the what, and get stuck in only the how? How can you join a group like that? When it was young and fresh, yes, easy. But now it appears old, stuck and stale (and often cruel). It's a laziness, wanting things to stay the same, holding on to something safe, still, and unfortunately now, dead. No risk. So again, the principals have been glossed over, nailed down, named and defined and it's all now procedural. Yet this is what I am rebelling against, not the original why or what. The connection with your God, wait, with everything I know about all religions is that God is love. Probably, most of the Republican party's original principals (small government, etc.) are something I can get into! So where is my God and my principals, is that not what is on my mind? To not be lazy? Isn't that what a rebel is fighting, complacency, conformity? And how much energy am I willing to invest in getting to my truth, rather than laughing or chiding those who appear to have given up finding theirs? What a waste of time that's been. So, as I see it, there are 2 very relative spots or places to come to rest. First, simply recognizing that a system is dead, and having all the fun of rebelling there (that's where the amateurs hang out). Again, this has been called the usually unsuccessful approach. The second is, if you are so inclined, to move on to truth searching, continuing to participate in this life at your best, never resting in thick, passionate-less dogma. Staying stuck at place #1 is not much better than what the rebel is so rebellious about, being stuck. In my case I've often rebelled myself into a no-mans land where nothing is good enough. Nice! So I rebel against being stuck. Don't get stuck there. Free your mind. Love um all. Be who you want to be, and how you want to be. Rebel against your own apathy. Some quotes: I thought I might find a couple of quotes in my list about this, but there's a bunch, hmmm, rebellion is a theme with me, duh!

• Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. Henry David Thoreau
• Is not life a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves? Friedrich Nietzsche
• Dogmatism is puppyism come to its full growth. Douglas Jerrold
• A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side. Joseph Addison
• The man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 30 has wasted 20 years of his life. Muhammad Ali
• Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Isaac Asimov
• Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing. Benjamin Disraeli
• You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. G.H. Hardy
• The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. J. K. Galbraith
• Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. Bernard Berenson
• And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. H.L. Mencken
• We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are. Unknown
• In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. Al Rogers
• Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. Bertrand Russell
• The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. Keynes
• Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Oscar Wilde